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Actors’ Equity Association, the theatrical actors union, has finally stepped in and pulled its members from the production until significant changes are made to the show’s special effects.  The show’s press representative has announced that they plan to re-open Wednesday night, but insiders say it will be difficult to make that deadline.

Broadway professionals who are accustomed to dealing with Actors’ Equity Association on a regular basis have been wondering when the union would finally step in and perform the fundamental role they have always claimed to play: protector of the safety of their members.  In an era where producers are forced to hire full-time massage therapists for chorus dancers and must pay hazard premiums to actors who perform on a raked (slanted) stage, it is an outrage that Mr. Tierney was the fourth actor to sustain an injury in this ill-conceived stage extravaganza.

Of course, ultimately the responsibility for this debacle is a combination of a stubborn, visionary director and a weak, inexperienced producer willing to accommodate her every desire.  But, in the traditional roles of the collaborating entities that make up a Broadway Musical team, the director and producer have never pretended to have the actors’ safety and well-being as their primary focus.  That sanctimonious position has been held by the actors’ union which often holds productions hostage for hazard pay, extra staffing and special make-up to protect the pores of the actors in their charge.

I’m a supporter of the free market and the rights of employers to basically call the shots for their employees’ work conditions.  I also support the other side of the free market which dictates that if an employer can’t provide a safe work environment, they have to deal with the fact that it will be very hard to find someone to work for them, and they are sure to be met with a hefty lawsuit if their employee gets injured due to their negligence.  But, years ago the actors’ union threw a wrench in to the free market ebb and flow between employer and employee and took on the role of grand protector of the actors’ safety and rights.  So one has to ask, where were they?  How did this show continue to go on?

I’m sure the union had a strong presence at the theatre during rehearsals and the lengthy preview process, and I hear through insiders associated with the production that there were moments of near-mutiny with cast members refusing to accommodate Taymor’s vision of a special effects, rock-and-roll extravaganza for fear of their lives.

As I said before, ultimately this is the fault of the director and the accommodating producers.  With Ms. Taymor, I am really disappointed.  She made history with her imaginative staging of Disney’s “Lion King” with her ground-breaking costumes that represented African animals in a very theatrical and surrealistic way.  She seemed to understand that when adapting a film to the stage, it is a horrible trap to try to re-create the film frame-by-frame.  It can’t be done.  It is a different medium.  Instead, Taymor re-invented and re-imagined “Lion King” for the theatrical stage.

So, what went wrong here?  Why did Ms. Taymor try to re-create flying and climbing stunts on stage with real actors that were actually performed by CGI creatures on film?  My hunch is the producer gave her a blank check and told her to go for it.

Michael Cohl is a first-time solo producer.  He has three theatre credits to his name, as a partner with a producing entity called TGA Entertainment.  Mr. Cohl’s background is a concert promoter and he was brought in as producer by the show’s composer, Bono of U2.  Mr. Cohl had promoted many of U2’s concerts.  As Mr. Cohl is now learning, Broadway ain’t concert promotion.

As long as rookie producers are willing to sycophantically accommodate diva writers and directors’ unrealistic and ill-conceived visions, disasters like this (and Shrek, the musical) will continue.

It brings to mind the day I had to meet at the LA Actors Equity Association (AEA) offices to negotiate some special provisions for a show I was hired to manage.  AEA is the union for stage actors and for all you Hollywood types who just deal with SAG, consider yourself lucky that at least you deal with a PROFESSIONAL operation. 

To get to the conference room at the AEA office, I walked down the length of their front offices with a pool of desks on the left and a wall full of office doors down the right side of the corridor.  The offices were for various representatives hired to enforce different contracts based on size of theatre and geographic location this side of the Mississippi.

As I walked, I noticed that on practically every other office on the right was a scotch-taped political cartoon.  And this wasn’t your benign leftist “Doonesbury” or Jules Pfeiffer scribble.  No, these were raw, in your face; George Bush is an evil, stupid chimp kind of cartoons.  The standard, “Bush lied, people died”, kind of stuff and Dick Cheney is Darth Vader/United States of Haliburton kind of stuff. 

What does it say about a workplace where the people in middle management feels completely comfortable posting these things for all the other employees, not to mention guests such as myself, to see? 

So, I finish my meeting and I win a few items on my wish list and my friend and adversary on the other side of the table leans in and says “You know, there’s going to be a job opening here soon, and we’d really like to bring in some people from the producer’s side to help us in some organizing efforts and to help re-fashion some of the contracts.  We think it would do us some good to have someone from the producers’ perspective on our team.” 

I actually commended him on the idea and agreed that it would do them a lot of good to add that perspective, but I didn’t think this was the job for me.

If the entertainment industry leans left, then the theatre world is left of left.  And if theatre is left of left, then the theatre actor’s UNION is so far left they consider Dennis Kucinich the reasonable alternative to Ralph Nader. 

As I was walking back out to the front door, I stopped in to schmooze with the Western Region Director, and I casually asked “Does anyone ever complain about the cartoons on the doors down the corridor here?”  “No, why?” he asked.   Why, indeed. 

I wonder if I should have taken the job just so I could have handed them a law suit six months later.

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